At that time, Songkick announced that they aimed to become the largest global database of concerts in the world, and last week they had apparently already reached their goal. They currently have more than 1.4m gigs in the archive with over 100,000 future concerts listed at any one time, and 2,500 new events logged each day. Not bad for a company that was founded by three friends little more than two years ago and, at the time, funded by themselves.

To reach such high figures, they use webcrawling for gathering data from 90 ticketing sites every day – anything from a small vendor in Norway to Ticketmaster. Fans also add more "in-the-know" gigs that don't go through ticket vendors, such as in-store shows at Rough Trade.

Songkick's close connection with ticket vendors is not only important for getting up-to-date info on upcoming gigs. Users can click straight through to the ticket vendor to purchase tickets, which is how Songkick makes their money. Company CEO and founder Ian Hogarth is eager to point out that though Songkick gets a cut from each sale, the fan does not pay any more.

What about secondary ticket vendors (or fan-to-fan platforms, as they often like to call themselves)? Like many concertgoers, Hogarth doesn't appear to be a big fan of them. However, he accepts that they exist and that some fans are willing to pay more for being able to get in to a sold-out gig. "We only deal with the bigger secondary ticketers like Viagogo, Seatwave and GetMeIn – and we do make sure that the fan is aware if they're buying from the secondary market, as we put those tickets on separate pages," says Hogarth. "That way they'll know if there are still primary tickets available."

Hogarth claims that other sites often won't be as transparent, since revenue is based on a percentage of the ticket price – in other words, the more expensive the ticket, the more profit.

Songkick.com is more than a destination for finding out where and when your favourite artist is playing next. Dedicated live music fans create "gigographies" of each artist (uploads have increased by 900% since a year ago), sharing photos, setlists and videos from the shows as well as reviewing them. If you're curious about a reviewer you can click on their profile and see what other gigs they've been to – and what they thought about them.

To be honest, Songkick isn't currently focused on connecting the artists with their audience. Hogarth says that their focus is to "super-serve" the fan. "We're currently not looking at artists being actively involved with the site, though there are some artists that post posters and pictures from their gigs on it."

I point out that some artists can be a bit touchy about unauthorised videos. "We don't host the videos ourselves," explains Hogarth. "They're embedded from YouTube. We've moved the responsibility upstream, if you will."

The site features an application that syncs up with your iTunes library and will alert you to any upcoming gig by artists featured in it. If you don't use iTunes, you can synch with your Last.fm listening history.

The data Songkick accumulates has also brought up some interesting stats regarding cities with the highest gig-frequency. It appears, not surprisingly, that London and New York are at the top of the list, battling it out, with a total of more than 2,717 gigs between them in the next month. A snapshot of ticket prices shows that New York is cheaper at entry level for high-profile gigs, while medium-sized and small venues are pretty much equivalent.

The rest of the top five cities for live music are, however, all in the US – the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Chicago – which raises the question: why? Doing live gigs is a vital part of developing and honing your skills as an artist, and to nurture new talent we need to support the live scene. Are Europeans less interested in watching live music? What about the Japanese (I'm judging on the size of the cities here)?

Hogarth says one of the missions of Songkick is to help people go to more concerts. If they succeed, everyone – including fans, artists, venues and concert promoters – will benefit.